Editor’s Note: This piece was co-authored by John Schlafly.
Sunday night’s town hall telecast from Washington University in St. Louis was a reminder of why Donald Trump dominated the field of 17 candidates who tried out for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump’s compelling performance in the second presidential debate was one that none of the other Republican hopefuls could have given.
As if in response to the pundits who demanded that he be more disciplined and “presidential” in the debates, Trump gave what amounted to a master class in those skills. Without yielding his steady command of the evening, Trump was quick on his feet and several of his retorts seemed to unnerve Hillary as she pursued her strategy of relentless put-downs.
For example, when Hillary pontificated why she considered Donald unfit to be in charge of the laws of our country, Trump responded by telling Hillary that the real reason is “because you’d be in jail” if Trump were administering the laws. People have had their lives destroyed based on a fraction of the legal violations that Hillary has perpetrated.
Hillary switched back and forth on camera from her phony smile and her mean-spirited real self, which the split screen on television captured for tens of millions of viewers to see. Trump, in contrast, came across as honest and far more believable.
Perhaps the most telling moment in the debate was when Hillary was asked about the long-delayed release of excerpts from her highly paid speeches to Wall Street bankers. She had concealed those sentiments during her campaign for the Democratic nomination, despite Bernie Sanders’ taunt that her paid speeches were more important to the voters than Donald Trump’s tax returns.
In one of those secret speeches, she told her exclusive audience that “you need both a public and a private position” on the issues facing America. When Martha Raddatz asked her about that two-faced admission, Hillary stammered and compared herself to Abraham Lincoln as portrayed in the Steven Spielberg movie based on a book by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Trump looked directly into the camera in disbelief at Hillary’s ridiculous answer and subsequently retorted, “Honest Abe never lied. That’s the big difference between Abraham Lincoln and you.”
In another 2013 speech, given in New York to executives of a Brazilian bank that paid her $225,000, Hillary said: “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.” That was what her well-heeled Wall Street audience wanted to hear, but it’s the opposite of what Trump and Sanders voters support.
Of the handful of Republicans who have turned against Trump, many, like Hillary, are themselves staunch supporters of “open trade and open borders.” Hillary’s “dream” of a “hemispheric common market” has been a longstanding project of the Bush family, including President George W. and his brother Jeb.
Hillary’s “private position” for “open borders” echoes what her husband, former president Bill Clinton, said to business leaders in Melbourne, Australia on September 10, 2001. As the host of that private meeting told the local newspaper, “The (former) president believes the world will be a better place if all borders are eliminated.”
Less than 24 hours after his Melbourne speech, 19 Muslims from the Middle East exploited our open borders to launch the 9/11 attacks against America.
Two years later at Yale University, Bill declared: “I think the great mission of the 21st century is to create a genuine global community” with an “over-arching system” of global governance. And in 2007 Bill Clinton praised the benefits of “open borders” and “easy immigration” while delivering the keynote address to a conference of 14,000 Indian Americans.
Eliminating national borders is the ultimate goal of globalists in both parties, who now say we must open America’s doors to thousands of Muslims posing as refugees from the civil war in Syria. Hillary would not deny or disavow Trump’s charge that she plans to increase by 550 percent the number of Syrian refugees that Obama has allowed to resettle here.
In a 2013 speech in Chicago, just released by Wikileaks, Hillary admitted that Syrian refugees pose a real threat because Syria’s immediate neighbors, Jordan and Turkey, “can’t possibly vet all those refugees. So they don’t know if, you know, jihadists are coming in along with legitimate refugees.”
Trump also effectively blamed Hillary for the thousands of criminal aliens, including murderers, who are set free and allowed to remain here because their home countries won’t take them back. As secretary of state, Hillary failed to use her leverage to pressure countries to take back their own citizens.
Trump’s strong performance in the second debate should silence his critics and energize his immense base that cuts across the entire political spectrum. Projecting a calm authority while staying relentlessly on message, Trump has reset his campaign on a path toward victory over the establishment and the media.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6.